Thursday, September 28:  A selection of the finest endurance aquabike racers from 16 different nations on the planet will be able to experience three memorable, challenging and very different tests when they tackle the UIM-ABP Aquabike Endurance World Championship event on Indonesia’s Lake Toba in late November.

Three days of racing will be staged on different courses on November 22nd, 23rd and 24th before the final round of the UIM-ABP Aquabike World Championship takes centre stage on Sumatra’s spectacular volcanic lake venue on November 25th-26th. Lake Toba forms part of the Toba Caldera UNESCO Global Geopark and is one of five UNESCO global geoparks in Indonesia.

All three endurance events will be staged on a closed-course circuit of around three-kilometres with a maximum time limit of one hour. Competitors will race for the Karo Cup on November 22nd on a course between Pangururan and the village of Tongging, located on the northern part of the lake in the Merek District of Karo and home to one of the most spectacular waterfalls on earth.

The Cup will be decided by two races of 35 minutes apiece and has been named after the nearby regency of Indonesia that is situated in the Barisan Mountains. The Batak Karo language is widely spoken in the Karo Regency, which is bordered to the south by the regency of Toba Samosir.

Racers will battle it out for the Dairi Cup on day two (November 23rd) on a course between Pangururan and the town of Silalahi to the south. Again, the Cup will be determined by finishing positions in a pair of 35-minute races.

The cup is named after the Dairi Regency, an inland region of Indonesia on the west shore of Lake Toba. The area is largely hilly and mountainous, rising to 1,250 metres above sea level, and has a tropical rainforest climate with heavy rainfall likely between September and May. It is mainly a farming region with coffee, corn and potatoes widely produced, in addition to fish farming from Lake Toba.

Day three (November 24th) will see aquabikers taking part in a further two slightly later 35-minute races for the Samosir Cup closed to the event’s base camp at Pangururan. Samosir is the name of the large volcanic island in Lake Toba and was formed after the eruption of a super volcano some 75,000 years ago.

Home to over 110,000 people, Samosir is the fourth largest lake island in the world and is linked to the Sumatra mainland by a narrow isthmus connecting the town of Pangururan and Tele on the mainland. The island is the centre of the Batak culture and is a popular tourist destination. The host town of Pangururan is the seat of the Samosir Regency and the largest town on the island.